31 Confronting Global and National Dilemmas

1989 to the Present

Called the year of revolutions, 1989 marked a transition from the Cold War to a new era of globalization and democracy. In that year, the Berlin Wall came down, Soviet-propped governments in the Eastern bloc fell, Chinese students protested in Tiananmen Square, and racial segregation began to unravel in South Africa. Pundits everywhere heralded the new era as the West’s vindication of its long cold war against authoritarianism. The hoped-for peace, however, dissolved as new issues emerged. Without the simplicity of the Cold War divide between the United States (the “good guys”) and the Soviet Union (the “bad guys”), Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton struggled to articulate America’s new role in the world as the only remaining superpower. Domestic politics became increasingly bitter and partisan. The devastating terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, provided a brief bipartisan unity and refocused and centered America’s foreign policy on what President George W. Bush called a “war on terror.” The war continued under Barack Obama, the first African American to win the presidency. During the Obama administration, crippling partisanship stymied efforts to address national problems of war, economic crisis, and globalization.